What The Site Still Holds

The Mal’ta site has been excavated and studied for nearly a century, but archaeological excavation is a slow and careful process, and no large prehistoric site is ever fully exhausted.

The Mal’ta site almost certainly contains additional material that has not yet been recovered or analyzed.

As methods continue to improve — as ancient DNA analysis becomes more powerful, as isotope analysis becomes more refined, as new analytical techniques develop for extracting information from ancient bone and sediment — the material already recovered from Mal’ta may yield additional information.

The genomes of other individuals from the site, if they can be recovered, would help researchers understand whether the genetic profile of the Mal’ta boy was typical of the population or unusual in some way.